Regional Pres Desks

In the Central/Midlands thread, Mike W has posted links to some fascinating photos from Pebble Mill, which includes close up shots of their self-op pres desk.





Assuming the ones in Leeds and Manchester which were used for full Breakfast opts with VT and live weather were similar and didn't get any modifications, that mixer panel looks scary - if I've understood it correctly you needed to press two buttons to cut to a source in both vision and sound?

Are there two CAM and Solo Mic buttons because there were inputs for two cameras and mics or are they duplicates? I'm surprised that there isn't a fader for sound sources other than the mic (the one sound source that I guess you would want to be at a constant level usually) and no facility to duck other sources you're talking over. Were the regional balloon symbols etc provided pre-ducked?

If that is half as complex to work as it looks then I take my hat off to Peter Levy, Claire Frisby, Ian White, Tina Bangs, Nigel Jay et al

Tina Bangs - whatever happened to her?!

Tina *clunk* Bangs, steve, you missed off the best user of the Self-Op pres desk; Kay Alexander

And Alistair Yates back in the late '70's

Tina Bangs. Does she ?

Like an outhouse door in a gale. Allegedly, of course

Yes but I was specifically referring to those in Manchester and Leeds who not only did simple bulletins with slides and a camera but added VT reports. Doing slides looks as easy as operating the fader on the far right (the one with no top on it) and pressing cut to switch between the slides.

Wendy Gibson used this type of thing at BBC Newcastle too, just to add another name

Stuart White, Kim Riley, Penny Bustin, Cathy Le Feuvre all used the Norwich self op desk for the daytime summaries (just still store and camera) - with a director driving the same panel for Breakfast bulletins (with a camera in the studio shooting the presenter)

The Norwich pres panel looked pretty identical to the pictures here - the panel is a custom BBC job to control a GVG Master series pres desk. There was an older panel which had square, round, triangular and hexagonal buttons to make them easier to identify by touch ISTR

Pauline Brandt used to use a self opt in Southampton as well I think.

It was a strange old desk, the only mixer I've seen where you could 'hot mix' - there was no preset row to pre-select the next source on, you just decided what transition you wanted (cut, mix etc. on the X-FADE selector panel) WELL in advance of needing it, and the next source button you pressed got that transition to it, from whatever source was on-air before. Most presenters only ever cut.

There was also the Name Super key switch for the caption keyer, if you pressed it one way (AUTO) it bounced back when you let go, and keyed a caption up (usually presenter name super) up for a fixed number of seconds, if you pushed the key the other way (MAN) it would latch and key the caption up until you pushed it back to the centre position (most astons were burned into VTs)...

In Norwich there was also a remote panel for Slidefile and a remote panel for Aston for the Breakfast director to use to change the travel and weather graphics. Who needed automation...

Thanks for that, Noggin. Am I right that there was no facility to control the audio level of sources other than the mic?

You can see the opt out control as well in pic 2!

Yep - and the talkback and monitoring controls.

Meanwhile in the Nations we have the same Pres desks as in London and fully crewed studios. HD studios, indeed. Such luxury we Scots have, eh?